Environmental Clashes on Native American Land: Framing Environmental and Scientific Disputes by Cynthia-Lou Coleman

Abstract

Reviewed by: Environmental Clashes on Native American Land: Framing Environmental and Scientific Disputes by Cynthia-Lou Coleman Sebastian Wurzrainer (bio) Environmental Clashes on Native American Land: Framing Environmental and Scientific Disputes by Cynthia-Lou Coleman Palgrave Macmillan, 2020 AS CYNTHIA-LOU COLEMAN (WAZHAZHE), a professor of communication at Portland State University, observes in Environmental Clashes on Native American Land: Framing Environmental and Scientific Disputes, "Only a handful of communication scholars . . . have examined Native American perspectives" (15). Using a concise, economic writing style, Coleman asserts that communication studies overemphasize how meaning is produced at the expense of considering the systemic inequities in this process, particularly as they relate to mainstream media's disregard for Native American perspectives. Drawing on Jürgen Habermas's notion of the public sphere, Michel Foucault's discussion of power, and William A. Gamson's and André Modigliani's ideas about interpretive packages, she offers a nuanced reading of an eclectic mix of news sources that covered the Kennewick Man and the Dakota Access Pipeline (DAPL) conflicts. She posits that the media constructed a framing for these events by drawing on a history of colonial tropes. For instance, the tribes that protested the mishandling of the Kennewick Man skeleton were regularly framed as "trouble-makers" beholden to "religiosity, myth or invention," recalling racist stereotypes of Indigenous peoples as savage and preindustrial (146–47). None of these insights are novel in the context of Indigenous studies, but that is not necessarily a criticism given that Coleman seeks to intervene in a field that typically overlooks Indigenous peoples. The opening chapters establish the "two prisms" through which Coleman filters the rest of the book: "the Media Hegemony Hypothesis" and "Indigenous Metaphysics" (143). She initially illustrates her premise by exploring the white supremacist pseudoscience of phrenology, specifically as it was applied to Native Americans such as the Sauk warrior Black Hawk. While the entire book is modular, this section—chapters 3 and 4—feels especially disconnected from Coleman's overall argument. She does, however, make a point that resonates across the book by coining the term "sciencing." As she repeatedly demonstrates, the performative "act of doing science" in the public sphere frequently overrules the actual validity of the science being done (37). The book transitions to an examination of the twenty-year conflict [End Page 158] surrounding the remains of Kennewick Man, a nine-thousand-plus-year-old skeleton found in 1996 in Washington State's Columbia River. In chapters 5 and 6, Coleman implies—but does not further explore—that phrenology influenced the anthropologists who initially classified Kennewick Man's skull as "Caucasoid." This classification fueled a fascination among media outlets about the possibility that the original inhabitants of Turtle Island were white. Coleman's most compelling argument is that the tribes who sought to reclaim Kennewick Man's remains soundly rejected the "Who was here first?" framing (74); they were instead concerned with their sovereign right to return their ancestor to the earth in accordance with their traditions. Perhaps more than anywhere else in the book, this highlights Coleman's reference to the media's systemic exclusion of Native worldviews (what she calls "Indigenous Metaphysics"). Coleman turns to the DAPL conflict in chapters 7 and 8, connecting it to three key events in the history of Sioux-settler interactions: the Battle of Greasy Grass, the death of Crazy Horse, and the Wounded Knee Massacre. She presents DAPL as an extension and reflection of this history, but she contends that in this most recent iteration, the Sioux were able to mobilize social media and bypass the hegemonic frameworks propagated by mainstream media. Coleman concludes on a more general note by highlighting how such instances of cultural resilience in a conflict like DAPL create the necessary groundwork for future Indigenous activists. Coleman's use of these prominent examples makes the book an ideal introduction to topics in Indigenous studies for entry-level undergraduates interested in environmental or communication studies. Yet this inevitably leaves ample room for further research. For instance, Coleman never really specifies what she means by "the media," leading to a series of conclusions that are apt but overly broad. She also concedes that "capitalism and colonialism" are...